Now that Karl Rove has stepped down from his lofty post to spend more time with his inner demons family, the staff at Weekly Review took the time to reflect on his days spent being known as “Bush’s Brain”.

Of course, that’s how he was known to Washington insiders, but to the Commander-in-Chief himself, Karl Rove was known as…. wait for it…. Turd Blossom.

Yeah, you read that correctly. The leader of the free world affectionately calls the man he trusts with his campaigns, policies and strategies “Turd Blossom”, which is what they call flowers in Texas when they grow in a pile of cow shit. No, we didn’t just make that up. Comedic geniuses way ahead of their time could not even come close to conceiving something like this.

Looking back on Turd’s (Karl? Mind if we shorten up your nickname a bit and just call you ‘Turd’ from now on? Thanks.) career, it’s easy to see why his rise to power was so quick: he played dirty. And that kind of no-holds-barred, win-at-all-costs douchebaggery always attracts someone that wouldn’t be able to win at all in a fair fight, so naturally Bush adopted him as his brain trust (after Bush’s father kicked him to the curb for using those same tactics).

After insinuating to voters that John McCain had an illegitimate child by a black woman, that Max Cleland (who lost most of his limbs in Vietnam) was a traitor to the U.S., and that John Kerry’s purple hearts were an object of derision, Turd decided to go after a new target: Valerie Plame.

As a quick aside: do you remember the first “Mission Impossible” with Tom Cruise and that part where he broke into a government building to steal something called the NOC list? Y’know – the part where he’s all hanging from wires and he can’t sweat on the pressurized floor and whatnot? Well, NOC means Non Official Cover, which basically means that agents on the NOC list are disavowed by their country if they ever get caught. So NOC agents in the CIA are like James Bond-ish super spies. Valerie Plame was on the NOC list in real life, which meant that her identity was probably kept in an ultra-secret vault similar to the one seen in the movie. Yeah. Rove outed her to the press just to be a dick. Oh, and also Plame’s husband told the administration that Saddam Hussein had no WMD’s. Go figure.

So, after outing an undercover CIA agent who was working on nuclear proliferation in Iraq, Rove was entrusted with helping the Republican party form a stronger majority in Congress during the midterm election season. Alas, he failed and the Democrats took back both chambers of Congress. You can read more about his failures here, as well as a good look into his new book deal – which has already been marked down before Rove has put pen to paper to write it.

To give folks an idea of what the book will say, I’ll just go ahead and quote my favorite line in the carpetbagger’s review of it:

“Bush was extraordinary; his critics were awful; and the media was unfair.” There, I just saved book buyers $29.95.

And there you have it. We at Weekly Review offer this tribute to Turd Blossom.

It’s a relatively short song; much like Turdie’s list of virtues and redeemable qualities. Enjoy!